PTM WEEKLY UPDATE -- JUNE 29, 2009

Painting by Venezuelan artist Cristóbal Rojas (1890).

What does the Bible say about purgatory?

Q. I teach an adult Sunday School class and so I was not surprised when a member of my church related that he was having problems explaining to a Catholic person that purgatory was not biblical (she had just lost her brother and was concerned). Her friend had assured her that her brother was in heaven, rather than in purgatory, waiting to be cleaned up and made ready for heaven.

My fellow member wanted to know if there was an easy answer in the Bible that could clear this question up. Of course I knew that the teaching is false but I looked on the internet and found that some of the same scriptures we might use, the Catholic encyclopedia also uses, only with a different spin. Do you have any thoughts on how I might respond to this question? Thank you and may God continue to bless you and your valuable work.

A. According to Catholic doctrine, some souls, although they have died in a state of grace, are not sufficiently free from sin and its consequences to enter heaven immediately. But at the same time, they aren't sinful enough to be destined for eternal punishment in hell. According to Catholic teaching, before these souls can be with God in heaven, they must first be "purified" in purgatory. Purgatory is like a temporary hell. Catholic catechism claims that in purgatory, souls "achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven." Time in purgatory may be reduced or avoided entirely by various prescribed acts and prayers. This is why Catholics make a practice of confessing their sins to a priest, who then directs them to perform certain "acts of contrition" to reduce the time they would otherwise have to suffer in purgatory. Additionally, prayers offered for the dead who are supposedly in purgatory (as long as they are offered in the right way, according to the right formula) can reduce the duration of their punishment, and get those souls out of purgatory and into heaven earlier.

This unbiblical doctrine is a hefty bludgeon for tyrannical religion to crush unwary believers under its oppressive power. Fear of hell and/or purgatory keeps tens of millions coming back to church every Sunday and keeps them sacrificing their time and money for human religious institutions that claim to be doing God's work.

The fundamental problem with this teaching, of course, is that it effectively denies the complete sufficiency of Jesus' work on the cross to pay for the sins of humanity. When we accept Christ, we are in a "state of grace," and accept God's forgiveness of all our sin -- past present and future. We have eternal life (John 6:47) because of our belief in Jesus, and we are "as good as" in heaven (Ephesians 2:6). Beyond that, there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that souls are "purified" or improved somehow after death, and there is little in the Bible to describe the intermediate state (the time between the death of the body and the resurrection of the body). When we construct any detailed theological edifice that lacks clear biblical evidence, like that of purgatory, and inflict it on people -- we are asking them to believe in some human construct -- and while it may be true, it may also not be true. We should certainly not expect people to believe in something, in the name of God, that humans alone have contrived. So the onus in this situation would be, in my thinking, on the person who is trying to provide a biblical rationale for purgatory.

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